From its faded carpeting to its harsh lighting to its cramped gates, Burbank Bob Hope Airport appears caught in a time warp, stuck in a bygone era. The 85-year-old facility has some charms — like having no jet bridges so passengers walk on the tarmac to their planes — but it’s a tired building lacking in amenities and familiar brands. The only recognizable concessions chain? Peet’s Coffee.

But there is potentially some great news for travelers. The Burbank-Glendale-Pasadena Airport Authority, which runs Bob Hope, is finally serious about constructing a new terminal with all the goodies passengers expect — spacious gate areas, an efficient security screening area, better food options, plenty of natural sunlight, more restrooms and additional power outlets. The new building would still have 14 gates, like the current one, but would be nearly 150,000 square feet larger. It’s early, but airport officials guess it might cost $300 million to $400 million.

An environmental review likely will not be completed until next year, and it could be a decade or perhaps even longer before construction is completed. A new building would seemingly provide a nice boost to an airport that is no longer thriving. In 2013, Bob Hope Airport served 3.88 million passengers, a decline of 5.2 percent from the previous year. At the airport’s peak, in 2007, more than 5.9 million passengers flew through Burbank.

But a new building is not a panacea. In the past five years, airlines have moved away from serving secondary airports like Burbank, preferring instead to invest at massive hubs like Los Angeles International where they can harness economies of scale and add more flights to more destinations. Airlines such as Southwest and American that have made cuts at Burbank will not add flights just because the terminal is newer or because it receives higher passenger satisfaction scores. Snazzier buildings do not drive demand.

“The problem is the communities want to have a good front door and that’s nonsense,” said Mike Boyd, a Colorado-based aviation industry consultant. “The best airport is the one that the customer doesn’t remember. Unless you have asbestos falling from the ceiling or rats chewing away the ticket counters, you don’t build a new terminal and get more traffic.”

This not news to Dan Feger, who runs Burbank airport. He is aware that the same trends that have reduced passenger traffic at L.A./Ontario International — the Inland Empire airport has lost more than 40 percent of its annual passenger traffic since 2007 — are hurting Burbank. Feger believes the major airport trend will eventually reverse and that Burbank will again grow, but he knows the airport authority has little control over broader aviation market forces. So he spins the need for the new terminal in a different way.

The building will be more passenger friendly, yes. But it will also be safer.

One improvement: The new building will be up to current seismic code. Another concerns the terminal’s location. At one point, the current terminal building is located just 250 feet from a runway, a distance that may have seemed OK in 1930 but it is now 500 feet shorter than the Federal Aviation Administration prefers. Burbank is still considered safe by the FAA, but the issue has nonetheless concerned airport executives for decades.

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“The separation between the runway and the terminal is inadequate,” Feger said. “If they weave off the runway, there is some risk that if something is in the way, there were will be a collision.”

Feger and his team will continue to meet with airlines and persuade them of the airport’s strengths. But airlines, including Southwest, which gave Burbank a huge boost by adding flights 25 years ago, appear more interested in LAX, where they can attract more high-fare-paying business travelers — the kind of passengers that help an airline’s bottom line. Two years ago, American Airlines even pulled out of Burbank to focus on its LAX operation. (American has since merged with US Airways, which still flies to Burbank.)

“We continually talk to airlines,” Feger said. “At the end of the day they take the information, they say ‘Thank you very much’ and they make their own decisions about where they will put their aircraft.”

For several years in the early 2000s, L.A.-area politicians floated the idea that facilities like Burbank and Ontario would serve as reliever airports for LAX. That has not happened because, in spite of what some politicians wanted, airlines could not be persuaded through incentives to leave LAX.

This year, LAX likely will break its all-time record, set in 2000, of 67.3 million passengers. It will not be able to grow forever, and Feger thinks Burbank will eventually capitalize.

“We don’t really believe that building a new terminal building is going to induce new service,” Feger said. “What we do think over time is that over time the congestion of LAX will drive passengers to Burbank,”

Henry Hartevelt, a San Francisco-based travel industry analyst, said Burbank probably needs a new terminal, even if it may not immediately pay dividends in the form of new flights.

“The airport lacks amenities behind security such as restaurants and other things that passengers appreciate,” Hartevelt said. “And the throughput at security is limited. The airport was designed way before we had these stringent passenger security standards in place.”

Ultimately, though, those amenities can only do so much. Burbank has troubles that will not be reversed easily, Boyd said.

“You have something called LAX you can get to reasonably easily that has a whole lot more air service and airlines,” Boyd said. “LAX is the giant sucking sound.”